Valve’s Linux-Based Steam PC Should Be Revealed This Year

Reports from a German site, and others, indicate that Valve could be planning to reveal a custom PC-console later this year.

The news comes from a Valve engineer, Ben Krasnow, who spoke about the hardware at the EHSM 2012 conference in Berlin. Krasnow noted that it will run on Linux, and that the full reveal will either be in March or in June.

Initial rumours regarding Valve working on a ‘Steam Box’ surfaced early in 2012, where it was denied by the company. A while after that, Valve decided to acknowledge the reports as well as enter the hardware market.

Recently, Valve’s boss, Gabe Newell, noted that a Steam PC for the living room is on the cards.

There’s no official word from Valve on this, just yet. It’s all based on what Krasnow said.

Ok I have to ask this, PC Gaming is supposedly held back from its true potential by windows and direct x (from what I understand), so if this steam box is using Linux, which from what i understand is WAY more open and flexible, does that mean that developers will have the power to truly go crazy with the hardware that a pc has? Sorry for the long and convoluited question but this has been bugging me.

Thanks!

http://egamer.co.za Dean Oberholzer

Linux is a bit tricky for development. It’s good for everything but gaming, really. Gaming isn’t too bad on it but it’s quite a mission to get things working. But that’s changing now, so anything can happen.

CodeDisQus

I’m keen to see how they manage it, because if this steam thing kicks of well, I wouldn’t mind having another partition just to play games if the games are really gonna be way better than consoles…..I mean, we hear that a 680 is like 16 times more powerful than the stuff in the consoles and I’m guessing that an I5 or I7 or the AMD equivalent is similarly as strong, so if we get rid of Windows or whatever else is throttling the hardware, surely that gives developers TONS of headroom to go wild (even if they choose not to do so)